Funding slashed, and a harvest ruined

Park cuts shut down Lowell community greenhouse program

By Hiroko Sato, hsato@lowellsun.com

Updated:
04/27/2013 06:35:55 AM EDT

GROWING SEASON ENDS: "I don't know what I'm going to do next year," said JoAnn Robichaud, who volunteers at the Lowell Community Gardens Greenhouse. The program has been forced to shut down, having lost its funding due to cuts to the Lowell National Historical Park's budget. SUN / DAVID H. BROW

LOWELL -- Inspecting and watering tender sprouts in hundreds of seed pots that fill the Lowell Community Gardens Greenhouse three times a week has been JoAnn Robichaud's way of working toward the future.

Many peppers and eggplants struggle to germinate. Basil can take a beating. But with the loving care by Robichaud, a longtime volunteer, and greenhouse manager Deborah Harding, all the seedlings will take permanent root at local farms run by immigrant farmers who are part of the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project.

The farmers' produce feeds the community. Some of their harvest may wind up in food banks as well. It's a chain reaction that helps Harding's vision: "Building the community from the ground up.

A statue of an angel watches over the Lowell Community Gardens Greenhouse at the Lowell National Historical Park's grounds on Aiken Street. Federal cuts slashed the program's funding. SUN / DAVID H. BROW

But the initiative has come to a sudden halt as the greenhouse program lost its only staff position amid the automatic federal spending cuts known as sequestration. The Lowell National Historical Park must shed $415,000 from its budget, including $14,260 for the greenhouse that it has jointly run with nonprofit organization Keep Lowell Beautiful.

"I don't know what I'm going to do next year," Robichaud said of the seedling operation as she looked over the countless sprouts growing in the greenhouse.

"It's heartbreaking," said Harding, who has spent years developing the greenhouse program.

The Lowell National Historical Park announced this week that the greenhouse -- which has hosted Earth Day activities annually, heralding the arrival of the growing season in the community -- will shut down due to sequestration.

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All national parks must reduce their budgets by 5 percent, which translates into the $415,000 cut in Lowell, according to Celeste Bernardo, the Lowell park superintendent. The impact will be felt far beyond the greenhouse; the funding for the Lowell Folk Festival and the Tsongas Industrial History Center will also be reduced, Bernardo said.

The sequestration will also mean furloughs of two weeks or more for thousands of Defense Department civilian employees at Hanscom Air Force Base. The region is also expected to lose millions of dollars in federal funding for road projects. Research funding cuts could also hurt the region's small businesses, educational and research institutions.

The greenhouse's closure comes nearly nine years after Keep Lowell Beautiful built the structure on the park grounds on Aiken Street. The greenhouse's first public project was planting at Mary Bacigalupo Garden on Shattuck Street, which the city and the national park run, according to Harding, a part-time national park employee who has been involved in the project from the start.

The national park teamed up with Keep Lowell Beautiful in 2009 by hiring Harding as the seasonal operations manager and offering use of utilities for the facility. In exchange, the park received a commitment from Keep Lowell Beautiful to organize volunteers for the park's canal and river beautification and cleanup projects, and to provide a special program involving local teenagers.

The efforts by Harding and up to 30 volunteers were bearing fruit. They would help area students learn how to grow crops and help agencies, such as St. Patrick's Church on Suffolk Street, create gardens. The program used a $10,000 Parker Foundation grant in 2009 to build a handicap-accessible raised bed outside the greenhouse and expand the Lowell Transitional Living Center Garden on Middlesex Street, among other projects.

Earth Day events that included greenhouse tours and workshops on container gardening and garden design, as well as the annual plant sales in May, drew many community residents to the greenhouse. Most recently, volunteers were coming to the greenhouse from Lowell House Inc. Working Opportunities Unlimited and Innovation Academy Charter School.

Bernardo said she approached Keep Lowell Beautiful as soon as the funding issue arose, but Keep Lowell Beautiful President Stephen Greene said his group could not fund the position on its own. Keep Lowell Beautiful and the national park reached a difficult decision to end the greenhouse program, Bernardo said.

Bernardo said many people were disappointed to hear the news, but also showed understanding about the budget issue.

Marc Ducharme, groundskeeper at the national park, said he was frustrated that the program, for which people invested their time and effort, has to disappear. The grants awarded to the program will also be wasted, he said.

"You need to grow on it, not close it," Ducharme said.

Robichaud, who lives nearby in Lowell's Acre neighborhood and walks to the greenhouse, said she could not have grown seedlings for immigrant farmers without Harding's help and the greenhouse space.

Harding said the raised bed will now be donated to Lowell High School so that the students can use it. She and greenhouse volunteers are also trying to continue to take care of the plants that have begun growing for the season to distribute them to farmers and residents.

"The whole group of us would like to see a home for the plants," Harding said, adding that it's the one last thing they could do with the greenhouse.

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